About Me

Thursday, March 1, 2018

The Manafort story: Diana West compares versions from The Atlantic and Washington Post. Both agree that Manafort was in a medical clinic for unspecified reasons in 2015 and emerged in Spring 2015 with the same emotional, financial, legal, and domestic problems he entered with. In this fragile state, Manafort's services were offered to Trump--for free-Diana West

"The clinic permitted Paul Manafort one
10-minute call each day. And each day, he would use it to ring his wife
from Arizona, his voice often soaked in tears. “Apparently he sobs
daily,” his daughter Andrea, then 29, texted a friend. During the spring
of 2015, Manafort’s life had tipped into a deep trough. A few months
earlier, he had intimated to his other daughter, Jessica, that suicide
was a possibility. He would “be gone forever,” she texted Andrea."

I have rearranged the following points from the piece in chronological order.1. In the spring of 2014, Viktor Yanukovych, Manafort's main meal
ticket, Foer says, for nearly a decade, was forced from the presidency
of Ukraine. "Fearing for his life," Yanukovych fled to Russia. Manafort
"avoided any harm by keeping a careful distance from the enflamed city."

Money, which had always flowed freely to
Manafort and which he’d spent more freely still, soon became a
problem. After the revolution, Manafort cadged some business from former
minions of the ousted president, the ones who hadn’t needed to run for
their lives. But he complained about unpaid bills and, at age 66,
scoured the world (Hungary, Uganda, Kenya) for fresh clients, hustling
without any apparent luck. ...

He seemed unwilling, or perhaps unable, to
access his offshore accounts; an FBI investigation scrutinizing his
work in Ukraine had begun not long after Yanukovych’s fall. Meanwhile, a
Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska had been after Manafort to
explain what had happened to an $18.9 million investment in a Ukrainian
company that Manafort had claimed to have made on his behalf.

5. At the "clinic," Manafort was allotted the daily ten-minue phone
call to phone his wife -- "in tears," he also "threatened suicide."6. When did Manafort leave the clinic? Foer doesn't tell us. He backs
into Manafort's departure from the clinic in the context of the newly
discharged patient's reportedly desperate effort to gain entree to
Donald Trump.

Foer opens the section this way:

"“I really need to get to" Trump, Manafort told an old friend, the real-estate magnate Tom Barrack, in the early months of 2016."

Foer doesn't get more specific about the date of this conversation;
however, the distinctive quotation -- "I really need to get to" -- marks
its provenance in a Washington Post piece based
on interviews with Barrack, who dated his conversation with Manafort to
shortly after the Iowa Caucuses, which were on February 1, 2016.

Foer continues:

"Barrack, a confidante of Trump for some 40
years, had known Manafort even longer. When Manafort asked for
Barrack’s help grabbing Trump’s attention, he readily supplied
it. Manafort’s spell in the Arizona clinic had ended."

All of this is more than passing strange.

First, about Thomas Barrack Jr., an American billionaire of Syrian
extraction.As an Arabic speaking lawyer in 1972, the Washington Post
reports, Barrack played some squash with a set of Saudi princes and thus
became "the American representative of `the boys.' " No word on whether
Barrack registered as a Saudi agent for this work for the Saudi family
dictatorship; officially or unofficially, however, he was a good one,
given his affinity for the Arab/Islamic world. The [Washington] Post: "Barrack spent
many hours listening to the Arabs discuss their world, which he said
gave him `great respect for the society and community.'"Barrack's "respect" paid off. By 1979, he bought a California ranch
-- "just down a hill from Ronald Reagan’s Rancho del Cielo." (Quelle
coincidence!) The Post continues: "The Secret Service later boarded
horses at Barrack’s ranch, and he occasionally went on trail rides and
sat around campfires with Reagan. `I loved him,' Barrack said of
Reagan."That's beautiful. Anyway, back to Manafort, who, by early 2016, the
Atlantic sort of tells us, has left suicide watch at the Arizona
"clinic." He has debts, he has a Putin-Linked-Oligarch looking for that
$19 million he "invested," his family life is chaos, and what does he
do? He calls up Barrack after Iowa and says: " `I really need to get to' Trump."

"Barrack supported Trump’s campaign, and shortly after Trump lost the Iowa caucuses, he reconnected with his old friend Manafort, a longtime Republican consultant."

Barrack "reconnected" with Manafort.The Atlantic has it the other way around.

"“I really need to get to” Trump, Manafort
said, according to Barrack. He told Barrack he wanted to work as Trump’s
convention manager, helping him navigate what they expected would be a
contentious affair."

It seems possible at least that Barrack and then Manafort had other
motives besides what may well be a cover story about Barrack helping his
dear friend Manafort heal his financial losses and restore his
professional bona fides, while simultaneously helping his dear friend
Donald become POTUS.

"Barrack forwarded to Trump’s team a memo
Manafort had written [telling] Trump that he had “avoided the political
establishment in Washington since 2005,” and [describing] himself as a
lifelong enemy of Karl Rove."..

To be sure, both men might have sent in pitches for Manafort. Then
again, Barrack's email to the Kushners (Post) and Manafort's "memo" to
"Trump's team" (Atlantic) may be one and the same document.

In other words, after Manafort's 2014 financial crash and 2015
breakdown, this once high-priced Igor to Global Crookdomwas shattered
goods -- humanly, financially, politically, and legally. He was a
ticking time-bombfor any of Trump's political enemies to have tossed
inside the Trump camp. Why would Barrack do such a thing to his "old
friend" Trump? Paul Manafort, of all people, was not the best choice
that a real friend (especially one apparently so well acquainted with
Manafort's career) would push onto any presidential candidate.When Barrack called Manafort in February 2016 some undisclosed period
after his "clinic" discharge (might Manafort have been there still?),
what was he thinking?Did he believe Manafort was the best manager to vault Trump (and the
anti-Muslim and restrictive immigration policies Barrack and his former
Saudi employers despise) into the White House?